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The Math Dude - How To Quickly Calculate Percentages - Quick and Dirty Tips ™

This document provides tips for quickly calculating percentages in your head. It explains that percentages can be understood as fractions out of 100. For example, 10% means 10/100 or 1/10. This makes it easy to calculate 10% of any number by moving the decimal place one position to the left. For harder percentages like 36% of 25, a trick is used - 36% of 25 is the same as 25% of 36. Since 25% is 1/4, 25% of 36 is 36/4 or 9. So 36% of 25 is also 9. This works because percentages can be written as decimals and the order of multiplication doesn't matter.

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Aswanth Ashu
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99 views

The Math Dude - How To Quickly Calculate Percentages - Quick and Dirty Tips ™

This document provides tips for quickly calculating percentages in your head. It explains that percentages can be understood as fractions out of 100. For example, 10% means 10/100 or 1/10. This makes it easy to calculate 10% of any number by moving the decimal place one position to the left. For harder percentages like 36% of 25, a trick is used - 36% of 25 is the same as 25% of 36. Since 25% is 1/4, 25% of 36 is 36/4 or 9. So 36% of 25 is also 9. This works because percentages can be written as decimals and the order of multiplication doesn't matter.

Uploaded by

Aswanth Ashu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to Quickly Calculate Percentages


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Quick, whats 36% of 25? Or how about 250% of 20? Learn a quick and dirty tip to help you
calculate all of those pesky percentages in your head.

October 26, 2012

By Jason Marshall, PhD, The Math Dude

Episode #127

Long time math fans may remember our first foray into the world of
percentages way back in the 12th and 13th episodes of the podcast.
In those shows we learned what percentages are, how theyre
related to fractions, how to use percentages to easily calculate tips
at restaurants, and how to use percentages to easily calculate sales
prices when shopping.
If youre not sure how to perform any of those handy calculations,
or if youre just in need of a general percentage refresher, I highly
recommend taking a look at those earlier shows and getting
yourself up to speed. Why? Because once youre caught up, youll
be ready to step up and learn how to become a true percentage-calculating machine. Which is
exactly what were going to turn you into today.

Recap: What Are Percentages?


To make sure were all on the same page, lets kick things off by taking a minute to recap a few key
facts about percentages. Lets start with the most important question: What are percentages? Perhaps
the most illuminating thing to know is that the word percent is really just the phrase per cent

squashed together. And since cent here means 100 (as in century), we see that the word percent
just means per 100. In other words, 10% means 10 per 100, which is the same as the fraction 10/100
or 1/10.
This turns out to be great news since it makes lots of percentages easy to calculate. In particular, its
easy to calculate 10% of any number since thats just 1/10 of the number. Why is that so helpful?
Because it means that you can quickly calculate 10% of a number simply by moving its decimal point 1
position to the left.
But what about calculating something like 36% of 25? Or maybe 250% of 20? In these cases, our trick
of using the power of 10% doesnt helpso what can we do?
See Also: [QUIZ] Can You Quickly Calculate These Percentages in Your Head?

How to Quickly Calculate Percentages


One trick that will often help you quickly calculate these types of percentages is to use the fact that x
percent of y is the same as y percent of x. Huh? I know that might sound kind of confusing, but its
actually pretty simple. Taking our example from before, this rule says that 36% of 25 is the same as
25% of 36. How does that help us? Well, since 25% is the same as the fraction 1/4, we see that 25% of
36 must be 36/4 or 9. So 25% of 36 is equal to 9, and 36% of 25 must also be 9.
The beauty of this trick is that every time youve solved one problem, youve actually solved two! And
thats especially useful when one of the problems is much easier to solve than the otheras was the
case here.
Its helpful to take a minute to see why this seemingly magical trick works. As I mentioned before, 36%
is equivalent to the fraction 36/100. Since we can write the fraction 1/100 as the decimal number 0.01,
we see that the fraction 36/100 can also be written 0.01 x 36. That means that 36% of 25 must be
equal to (0.01 x 36) x 25. Now here comes the cool part: The associative property of multiplication tells
us that we can multiply several numbers in any order wed like. Which means that (0.01 x 36) x 25 =
(0.01 x 25) x 36. But 0.01 x 25 is the same thing as 25%, which means that this is equal to 25% of 36. So
36% of 25 is equal to 25% of 36. It aint magic, its math! Pretty cool, right?
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Comment

SusheelaHosadurgaBesantWomen'sCollege
super
ReplyLikeFollowPostMay21at3:34pm
DanielWooWorksatRiotGames
Thereisanotherwayofdoingpercentagesbutjustfindinganumberusingapercentageisn'tall
likewhatisthepercentof6of36TheMathDudesmethoddoesn'tworkonthis.Inthiscase(I
knowyoucandoitmentallybutthereismuchharderonesthenthis)youcanput36over6and
nexttoit,putavariableovera100.ThenyoucrossmultiplyBUTONLYFOR36AND100whichis
360.Thendividethatby6.Thenyougettheanswer.......60%!Itaintmagic,itsmath!Prettycool,
right?
ReplyLikeFollowPostMarch13at9:21am
HanmantGaudar

FollowPGSTUDENTatJ.N.MedicalCollege,KLEUniversity,Belgaum

itsgoodideatocalculate%.
ReplyLikeFollowPostDecember24,2014at1:33pm
royansar88(signedinusingyahoo)
DownloadverylightwightandoweasomesoftwaremadeexactlytosolvePercentageproblems.
Link:http://percentagecalcbyansarsoft.en.softonic.com/.
ReplyLikeFollowPostNovember30,2013at1:25am
RockyBerlierAcademyofFineArtsVienna
Goodone.Forthe250%x20problembreakingthepercenttobasicpartshelps.Since200%is
double(2x)theamountand50%ishalf(.5x)theamount,then200%of20is40and50%of20is
10.Thus,40+10is50.
ReplyLike
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2FollowPostNovember12,2013at9:50pm

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